The walk back to the Uchiha camp was the longest journey of Indra's life. Each step was a monumental effort, a battle fought against the tremors wracking his small frame. The aura of invincible power that had moments before split the earth and silenced an army had evaporated, leaving behind a vessel of bone-deep exhaustion and searing pain. He pushed aside the flap of his personal tent, the coarse fabric feeling like a mountain weight, and stumbled inside. The moment he was free from prying eyes, his legs gave way. He collapsed to the ground, his armor clattering against the hard-packed earth, a sound of hollow finality.
He could not move. It was not merely fatigue; it was a systemic collapse. His body, though housing an ocean of chakra and honed by years of disciplined breathing, felt like a puppet with its strings cut. The true damage was not physical, but mental and spiritual. The awakening of the Sharingan, a psychic explosion triggered by trauma and sacrifice, had scoured his mind. It felt as if a white-hot brand had been pressed against the inside of his skull. A piercing, needle-like pain lanced through his temples, a hundred, a thousand times, each stab a fresh reminder of the cost of his power.
And he had been a fool. A glorious, terrifying fool. In his rage, in his desperate need to stop the carnage, he had reached for a power his body was not yet meant to contain. The solar energy he had so carefully accumulated during his morning meditation, a pure and potent force meant to be channeled gradually, he had unleashed in its entirety. It was this raw, celestial power that had supercharged his Nature Breathing techniques, transforming them from skilled sword-forms into acts of geo-forming divinity. It was a forced, temporary Sage Mode, using the sun itself as his natural energy source. The backlash was inevitable. Just as a Sage who draws too much natural energy turns to stone, Indra, having exhausted his solar reserves, was left a drained, hollow shell. His chakra coils felt scorched, his muscles like water, his very life force dimmed to a flicker.
But the physical agony was a mere backdrop to the storm raging in his heart. Lying on the cold ground, unable to even wipe the drying blood from his cheeks—Kenta's blood—the tears finally came. They were not the tears of a child scared of the dark, but the devastating, silent sobs of a man who had seen this horror before. He squeezed his eyes shut, the two tomoe spinning behind his eyelids, and the image was seared into his soul: the young Uchiha, Kenta, throwing himself forward, the sickening sound of steel penetrating flesh, the warmth of his lifeblood splashing across his face.
'Why? Why does this keep happening?'
His mind spiraled back, through the veil of reincarnation, to a previous life, to a different face contorted in the same selfless sacrifice. Vidya. His wife. Her name was a prayer and a curse on his lips. He saw her again, not in the blur of memory, but in the crystal-clear agony of the Six Eyes and the Sharingan—a perfect, torturous recall. He saw her pushing him away from the falling debris, her eyes wide not with fear, but with a fierce, loving determination. He saw the light leave her eyes, just as it had left Kenta's.
He had been powerless then. A mere scholar, a man of intellect who could not alter the brutal, physical fate that crushed his world. He had sworn, in this new life, with this new power, that he would never be powerless again. He would become strong enough to defy destiny, to protect what mattered.
And yet, the same pattern had repeated. Another person had died for him. Another life had been extinguished to preserve his own. The power he had so painstakingly cultivated had been useless in that critical moment. It had only manifested after the sacrifice, a vengeful, destructive force, not a protective one. The self-blame was a corrosive acid, eating away at his spirit. He was not strong enough. He had failed. Again. The weight of Kenta's life, of Vidya's life, pressed down on him, a suffocating mantle of grief and sorrow that was far heavier than any armor. He lay there, a six-year-old demigod, weeping in overwhelming sadness for the two souls he couldn't save, trapped in the cruel irony of his own immense, yet insufficient, power.
While Indra lay broken in his tent, a different kind of storm was brewing in the main command pavilion of the Uchiha clan. The air was thick with the scent of sweat, blood, and a rising, volatile tension. The initial awe at Indra's display had curdled, fermented by the shocking revelation of his parentage.
Tajima stood at the head of the gathered elders, his posture rigid, his own Mangekyou Sharingan a dormant threat behind his calm facade. The elders, their faces a mosaic of scars, age, and pride, were in an uproar.
"This is an outrage, Tajima!" one elder, a man with a hawk-like nose named Hikaku, slammed his fist on the table. "You hid this from us! You let a child with Senju blood be raised as a pure Uchiha!"
"He stopped a war, you old fool!" countered another, Elder Tamiko, her voice sharp as a kunai. "Did your pure blood ever accomplish such a thing? The boy awakened his Sharingan straight to two tomoe! That is the will of our ancestors, not some taint!"
The debate raged, a cacophony of fear, pride, and prejudice. But one voice cut through the noise, a voice dripping with a fanaticism so extreme it silenced the room. Uchiha Saho stepped forward. He was a man in his late forties, with a lean, hungry look and eyes that burned with an unnerving, absolute conviction. His Sharingan was active, the three tomoe spinning slowly, reflecting not just the world, but a deeply warped ideology.
"Enough of this bickering," Saho's voice was a low, venomous hiss. "There is only one solution to this… contamination." He let the word hang in the air, letting its ugliness poison the atmosphere. He turned his gaze directly to Tajima, his expression one of utter contempt. "Clan Leader. For the purity and honor of the Uchiha, for the souls of every clansman who has ever fallen to a Senju blade… you must kill the boy."
A collective, sharp intake of breath filled the tent. Even those who had been arguing against Indra's presence were stunned into silence. Tajima's controlled composure shattered. His chakra flared, a dark, oppressive wave that made the lanterns flicker. In an instant, his Mangekyou Sharingan swirled to life in his eyes, a pattern of intricate, deadly beauty.
"Saho," Tajima's voice was deathly quiet, yet it carried the force of a landslide. "Repeat that. I dare you."
But before Saho could speak, Elder Tamiko was on her feet, her own three-tomoe Sharingan blazing. "You dare?!" she roared, her aged frame trembling with rage. "You dare speak of killing kin? Indra is Uchiha! His blood, mixed or not, carries our legacy! How dare you suggest we murder the very hope our clan has prayed for? Are you so blinded by your own pathetic jealousy that you would destroy our future?"
Saho's lip curled into a sneer. "Hope? You call that a hope? He is a ticking bomb, Tamiko! A creature born of our greatest enemy and some… some divine aberration!" He spat the word 'divine' like a curse. "So he has talent. So what? Talent in a vessel of impure blood is a disease. If he becomes Clan Leader, we, the proud, pure-blooded Uchiha, will be forced to bow to a half-breed! I will never kneel to a filthy mixed-blood! Never!"
The word 'filthy' was the final straw. Tajima's killing intent became a physical pressure. "So," Tajima said, his voice gritted, each word a shard of ice, "if I understand your… philosophy, Saho. My son, Indra, will never become Clan Leader. Is that what will satisfy your twisted sense of purity? Is that enough?"
For a moment, it seemed the crisis might be averted. A compromise, however bitter. But Saho's fanaticism was a bottomless pit. A crazy, bloodthirsty light gleamed in his eyes. He smiled, a horrifying rictus of malice.
"You think me naïve, Clan Leader?" Saho chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "Your filthy mixed-blood son already possesses power that can silence a battlefield. If he is allowed to grow, what will stop him? No, mere disinheritance is not enough. To truly neutralize the threat, to ensure the sanctity of our bloodline… you must remove his Sharingan. Pluck those cursed eyes from his head. And then, cripple him. Sever the tendons in his arms and legs. Render the beast harmless. Do this, and I will never speak of this again."
The tent fell into a silence so profound it was deafening. The proposal was so monstrous, so antithetical to every code of shinobi and clan honor, that it seemed to suck the very air from the room. It was not a demand; it was the manifesto of a madman.
And then, movement.
From the shadows at the back of the tent, a figure who had remained silent throughout the entire proceeding moved with a speed that defied his apparent age. It was the Great Clan Elder, Amara Uchiha, a man so old and revered that his word was often law. His face, a roadmap of wrinkles, was set in a mask of utter fury. He did not use a jutsu. He did not activate his Sharingan. He simply drew back a gnarled, age-spotted fist and drove it forward with the weight of generations of disappointment.
The punch connected with Saho's jaw with a sickening crack that echoed like thunder in the silent tent. The force was immense, lifting Saho off his feet and sending him flying backward through the fabric wall of the pavilion, tearing a massive hole in it as he landed in a heap outside.
But the physical blow did not extinguish the ideological fire. Staggering to his feet, spitting out a tooth and blood, Saho's fanaticism only burned brighter. He was a cornered animal, and his venom was his only weapon. He began to gather a crowd of clansmen who had been milling outside, their faces confused and anxious.
"Brothers! Sisters!" Saho yelled, his voice cracking with fervor. "Hear me! We are the Uchiha! We fight for our honor, for our name! Our clansmen die by the hundreds, their blood soaking the earth, slain by Senju hands! And what does our Clan Leader do? He beds our enemy! He sires a bastard with Senju blood! That thing in that tent is not our hope; it is our shame! It is an abomination! Join me! Let us cleanse our clan of this filth! Let us kill Indra Uchiha and restore our purity!"
His words, fueled by rage and manipulation, found purchase in some hearts—those grieving, those irrational, those who saw a simple, hateful solution to their complex pain. A murmur of agreement rippled through a section of the crowd. They began to move, a mob forming behind Saho, their shared anger a unifying, if destructive, force.
Just as the mob threatened to become an unstoppable tide, a young man stepped forward, blocking their path. It was the same young man who had been near Kenta during the battle. His name was Ren, and his eyes were clear, his expression resolute.
"Elder Saho," Ren's voice was calm but firm, cutting through the angry buzz. "A question, if you will. The Gojo Clan is, and always has been, a neutral clan. They have never raised a sword against the Uchiha, nor have they ever allied with the Senju against us. Clan Leader Tajima married the Gojo princess, Hana. Not a Senju. So, I ask you, why do you hate Young Master Indra?"
The question was like a splash of cold water. The irrational mob paused, the logic beginning to penetrate their fury. They looked at Saho, waiting for an answer.
Saho's eyes darted, searching for a foothold. He found one in the mud of his own prejudice. "Because Hana Gojo had Senju blood in her veins!" he declared, as if revealing a great truth. "Yes, she was a Gojo princess, but her father was none other than the previous Senju Clan Leader, the father of Butsuma himself! She was half-Senju!"
He had expected this to reignite the mob's fury. Instead, it had the opposite effect. The clansmen who had been following him now looked at him with dawning disdain and horror. Ren pressed the advantage, his voice rising.
"And in your blind hatred, Elder Saho, you have forgotten the most crucial thing! If we harm Indra, we are not just harming a half-Senju boy. We are murdering the last descendant of the Gojo Clan!"
He let that sink in, his gaze sweeping over the assembled Uchiha.
"The Gojo Clan may be extinct, but their brother clans are not. The Uzumaki, with their formidable fuinjutsu and life force. The Kaguya, with their bone-manipulating savagery. The Kurama, with their genjutsu mastery. Even the Senju, his mother's own kin. All of them were sworn brothers to the Gojo. If word reaches them that the Uchiha clan slaughtered the last Gojo heir—a child, no less—what do you think will happen?"
Ren's voice dropped to a deadly whisper. "The next day, the Uchiha clan would become history. They would descend upon us like a wrath of nature and wipe us out to the last man, woman, and child. You are not advocating for our purity, Elder Saho. You are calling for our total and utter annihilation."
The truth of his words was undeniable. It was political reality, a consequence far beyond the petty concerns of blood purity. The mob dissolved, its anger replaced by a cold, sobering fear. They looked at Saho not as a leader, but as a lunatic who had almost led them to their collective suicide.
It was at this moment that Tajima emerged from the torn pavilion, his presence commanding silence. His face was granite, his Mangekyou still swirling. He looked at the chastened crowd, then at the seething Saho.
"Hear my decree, as your Clan Leader," Tajima's voice boomed, final and absolute. "To appease the… concerns… of the clan, my first son, Indra Uchiha, will never become the Clan Leader of the Uchiha. This is my decision."
A ripple of shock, and for many, profound disappointment, went through the clansmen. They had just seen their future, their ultimate weapon, their hope, and now he was being cast aside. All eyes turned to Saho, now universally hated for having provoked this loss.
Tajima was not finished. A spectral, purple energy began to flicker around him, coalescing into the formidable ribs and a single arm of a Susanoo. The sheer, divine power of it made everyone stagger back.
"But let this be equally clear," Tajima thundered, the Susanoo's fist clenching. "Indra is my son. My blood. If any one of you, for any reason, attempts to harm him, I will not just kill you. I will wipe out your entire family line. I will erase your name from the Uchiha legacy. This is not a warning. It is a promise."
The threat hung in the air, a palpable, terrifying force. The Great Elder Amara stepped forward, his voice echoing Tajima's finality. "Uchiha Saho," he declared, "for fanaticism that borders on treason and for actions that nearly plunged this clan into civil war and extinction, you are hereby stripped of your position as an elder. You are banished from the council, and your voice will no longer be heard in any matter of clan import."
Defeated, exposed, and utterly broken, Saho could only stand there, the object of universal contempt. The clan's internal crisis had been, for the moment, brutally resolved.
But as the Uchiha tentatively dispersed, the air still thick with unresolved tension, the wider world had not stood still. The news of Indra's power and his parentage had reached the Senju camp, causing a similar, if not greater, upheaval. Butsuma's grief was warring with his duty, and hardliners within his own clan were calling for pre-emptive strikes, fearing the Uchiha now possessed a weapon of unimaginable power.
The war that Indra had stopped with two sword strokes had not ended. It had merely been put on a temporary hold. The Senju and Uchiha conflict, now intensified by the shocking emergence of a child who belonged to both and neither, was about to enter its most brutal and desperate chapter yet. The peace had been a mirage, and the storm clouds were gathering once more.